The garden party generation.

This article report news from book industry. Herbert Lottman juxtaposes Proustian memories with today's rougher publishing scene, and reports continental trade statistics. Some of publishers can remember the era before the gritty contemporary business climate descended on Paris, when the publishing year ended with a gracious garden party on the grounds of the Gallimard family's Left Bank mansion. Then, all of a sudden, Bertelsmann came to town. It took a succession of book trade crises before everybody understood that Bertelsmann's book club, France Loisirs, was everybody's club, and that it was not about to go away.